What's New

Bob Park, a Physicist at the University of Maryland and author of the book Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, has been writing a weekly commentary on science-related news for longer than I can remember. It is available on the American Physical Society's web site at What's New. Here is his lead piece for this week.

VISION: WHERE DOES THE ADMINISTRATION GET ITS SCIENCE ADVICE?
On Feb 7, when the President's FY06 Budget Request is released, Sean O'Keefe will announce that no money is allotted for repair of the Hubble Space Telescope. However, money will be provided to drop the greatest telescope ever built into the ocean. Fixing Hubble with astronauts is too dangerous, O'Keefe said. Repairing Hubble with robots is too uncertain, an NRC panel said. It's too expensive anyway, the White House said. On the same day, the White House estimated the budget deficit at $427B. Besides, it wasn't too dangerous for the ISS crew to spend five hours outside yesterday repairing a Russian robot arm. So what's the arm for? It's so astronauts can make repairs without going outside. Hmmm. But why would anyone bother to repair the ISS? It doesn't do anything. Drop the ISS in the ocean, and save Hubble.

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